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Leverage Review: Flying The Coop

Some of my favorite Leverage episodes are flashbacks where team members portray the people in the story we watch. There was the "The Rashomon Job," where we got to see the same event from each of the team’s point of view, along with last season’s "The Van Gogh Job," where Aldis Hodge and Beth Riesgraf portrayed Charlie and Dorothy - and were amazing.

It's these episodes that keep us on our toes. They tend to break the mold a bit and in some cases have a very strong emotional connection for us and the team. This week the trend continued in "The D.B. Cooper Job," as Nate and the team agreed to help Agent McSweeten clear the black mark on his dying father’s service record with the FBI.

It's safe to say that Agent Todd McSweeten has changed since we first met him in season one. He started out a bit bumbling, goofy and naive. Five years later he has grown out of the bumbling goofiness (mostly), but he is still seemed a bit naive about the identity of Parker and the rest of the Leverage Inc. unit.

Then again, maybe what I’m calling as naivete is really just the gift his father passed on to him that allows him to see the good in people and he is choosing not to look too deep into Nate and the gang because they've only every helped him.

Either way, I have a new respect for Todd McSweeten after meeting his dad Peter. Both men take pride in seeing the good in a person and in the case of the latter, he helped a man turn his life around and do more good in his life than one big wrong.

What a great twist on the D.B. Cooper legend that the he was really Steve Reynolds and went to work for the FBI, spending his career doing important things while keeping Peter from discovering who he really was.

That brings us to my final question: What is the measure of a man? Does one bad act taint all the good he did afterwards? Given that Todd now knows the truth about Reynolds and let him go, would he understand about Nate, the team and the work they do?

Maybe we will see Agent McSweeten again and find the answer to that second part, but the first one I think is up to each of us. For me, the measure of a person is what he does for someone who can do nothing for him or herself.

If you hold the door open for someone, help someone reach something on the top shelf of a grocery store, or stop and help someone in trouble, I would like to believe there is good in there – even if events in life have caused a detour on your path.